Sterling Check Corp. (NASDAQ:STER) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Page 6 of 11

Joshua Peirez: Thanks Kyle. So first let me just start with, I think and as we shared in our prepared remarks and as we shared in particular in our slides on Slide 10. We believe that we are industry best in winning new business. So we think that whether times are good, bad or otherwise we win more business than others do as reflected in the 50 plus million of new business that we put on last year, even while lapping really great comps in prior years. So we start with the assumption that we are positioned to win business based on our client support model, based on our technology, based on our quality of fulfillment, based on the turnaround times we provide, all the things that we’ve been working on since I came here in 2018.

And if we use 2020 as an example, we put on a ton of new deals that didn’t show up until ’21, in 2020 when people had to pull back and retrench and we’re starting to see a lot of those same dynamics. So we are seeing more RFPs for us to go out there and win, from those smaller and mid-sized players, because they’re having their service levels drop and that’s causing anxiety for clients. So we would expect to be able to use any downturn and any difficulties this year to win a lot more new business from those small and mid-sized players, but also from our larger competitors, who we think we compete very well with as well.

Kyle Peterson: Okay. That makes sense and that’s helpful. And then I guess just a quick follow-up kind of on the M&A pipeline. I know one of your competitors was kind of recently saying that the M&A market, is — seems pretty challenging and the valuations haven’t really come down, but then I guess with A-Check kind of a 4 times EBITDA post synergy multiple, I guess that seems to be little contradictory of that. So I guess what are you guys seeing in the M&A pipeline and do you guys think you need to take a pause here to integrate these two deals or do you think there is potential for more M&A later in ’23?

Joshua Peirez: Sure. Thanks, Kyle. So I think our view on M&A is always that we are going to pay a fair price that fits in our model, we’re not going to overpay for deals, we are going to be patient, it’s actually the reason we were not able to close deals in Q3 last year, Q4 last year as the macro shifted and the targets that we were looking at their expectations hadn’t changed. So we were unable to move forward. Some of those, we were able to keep warm like Socrates and A-Check, some of them we were not. We had a few others that we moved along with pretty far down the pike, but we didn’t like what we saw in the end in terms of how their client base was performing in this macro, or we didn’t like the fact that they weren’t resetting their expectations on price, given the changes that they were seeing in their client base and their macro because they were still being unrealistic.

Page 6 of 11